Four exceptional educators earned a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness the monarch migration on Nat Hab’s Kingdom of the Monarchs adventure, journeying deep into Central Mexico’s forested highlands alongside expert naturalist guides. Surrounded by towering oyamel fir trees blanketed with millions of delicate, orange-and-black butterflies, the teachers observed firsthand the extraordinary spectacle of monarchs gathering at their winter roosting grounds. Here, two of our Monarch Butterfly Scholarship Grant recipients share reflections on this unforgettable experience:
Lindsey Paulsen: From Snowstorms to Sanctuaries
This winter, I had the incredible honor of receiving the Monarch Butterfly Grant Scholarship from Natural Habitat Adventures, which provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit the monarch butterflies in their overwintering sanctuaries in Mexico—something I’ve taught my first-grade students about for years but never dreamed I’d witness firsthand.
Getting to Mexico was challenging due to a winter storm in my area. Thankfully, I made it through the snow to the airport, and my flight miraculously departed on time. It truly felt like the trip was meant to be.
Upon arriving in Mexico City, I met fellow scholarship-winning educators. Together, we visited an anthropology museum filled with fascinating artifacts from ancient Maya, Inca and Aztec civilizations—perfectly aligned with an upcoming unit for my first graders. I eagerly took numerous pictures, excited to bring these real-world visuals back to my classroom.
The following day, we journeyed into the mountains to visit one of the monarch sanctuaries. The experience was surreal—traveling in open-bed trucks, riding horseback and hiking the mountain trail. Coming from small-town Indiana, I never imagined myself in such a remote, sacred and beautiful location. Reaching the grove where thousands of monarchs roosted overwhelmed me emotionally. The trees were heavy with butterflies, their delicate wings creating an ethereal hush. It was cold and damp, so most monarchs remained stationary, but just standing there—witnessing something I’d only read about—was breathtaking.
Each subsequent sanctuary visit was uniquely special, and we learned so much from our local guides and each other. I eagerly shared my journey in real-time with my students, sending emails and videos directly from the mountain, and prepared a travel journal for my class to follow my journey. This experience represented everything education should be: authentic, meaningful and full of wonder.
This incredible journey enriched my life and provided powerful stories to share with my students. Standing where the monarchs rest is an experience I’ll carry forever.
Jeanine Ging: Inspiring Lessons at Home and Abroad
The ride up to the Monarch Sanctuary was thrilling and refreshingly cool in the back of our truck. I was excited to ride on horseback, something I hadn’t done since I was a teenager. After dismounting and beginning the hike up the mountain right behind our guide, reality truly set in—I was finally going to witness the phenomenon of overwintering monarchs. After years of teaching children and adults about monarch life cycles, the migration and milkweed, and spending autumns tagging monarchs for citizen science, it felt surreal to be there in person. Breathing heavily from the climb and feeling the burn in my legs, I paused when our guide pointed into the trees. The day was foggy, and through the mist, I could just make out the monarch clusters gathered in the branches. Standing quietly, I was awed by the sight before I started capturing photos and videos to bring this incredible experience back home. I even activated my Project Monarch app, hoping to detect a monarch equipped with a transmitter.
It was surreal to stand silently among the trees, observing hundreds of monarchs clustered together, appearing as though they were dripping from the branches. I kept thinking, “I’m really here.” The variety in the formations fascinated me—some clusters thick and dense, others spread across branches. Monarchs also scattered the ground and bushes, with the occasional solitary butterfly resting alone.
Our Nat Hab Expedition Leaders anticipated every possible need, blending adventure with comfort. They shared extensive knowledge about monarchs, local culture and history, always ready to answer questions and accommodate special requests like birdwatching and tasting local chocolate.
This scholarship provided invaluable experiences, photographs and knowledge I can now share with my students and community through presentations, walks and tagging events, encouraging others to care about monarchs and their habitats. Thank you for this amazing opportunity!
Picture an expanse of wetlands so vast it’s five times larger than the Florida Everglades—an enormous freshwater floodplain pulsing with a near-constant cycle of inundation and retreat. This dynamic landscape is the Pantanal, home to some of South America’s largest and most charismatic species: giant otters, giant armadillos, giant anteaters, hyacinth macaws and the heaviest cat in the Americas—the jaguar. It is a haven of biodiversity and beauty, a vital artery of water and life.
Recently, we had the pleasure of speaking with Abby Martin, founder of the Jaguar Identification Project, about her team’s efforts to better understand and protect Brazil’s biggest cat. Over the years, this project has grown from a personal passion into a conservation tool embraced by the local community and by travelers who yearn to see these magnificent creatures thriving in their natural habitat.
A Place Like No Other
To fully appreciate the role of the Jaguar Identification Project, it helps to understand the Pantanal itself. Covering 42 million acres, this mosaic of swamps, forests, rivers and floodplains is renowned for holding the highest density of jaguars on Earth.
Yet the Pantanal isn’t just about big cats—it’s also a watery crucible of life that supports more than 650 bird species, alongside tapirs, capybaras, caimans and countless amphibians, reptiles and insects. Giant river otters—playful and social carnivores—cruise through channels hunting fish, while families of capybaras forage along the shores. Herds of grazing animals and an orchestra of bird calls color the soundscape at dawn. All of these creatures depend on the Pantanal’s seasonal flood pulse, a rhythmic rise and fall of water levels that triggers migrations, fruiting cycles and breeding seasons.
But that natural cycle is weakening. Increased deforestation in the surrounding Cerrado savanna and the Amazon Rainforest—ecosystems that feed moisture into the Pantanal’s waterways—has altered the timing and intensity of rains. As rainfall patterns become erratic, droughts intensify. These changes have led to larger, more frequent wildfires, devastating huge areas of this once-lush terrain. In some recent years, catastrophic fires have burned as much as 40% of the biome, dealing a severe blow to the Pantanal’s flora and fauna. Abby notes that fires—once part of the region’s natural rhythm—have grown so intense and frequent that recovery between burn cycles becomes more challenging. The Pantanal’s watery heart is under unprecedented strain.
The Pantanal has long been known as the world’s premier place to view wild jaguars. One reason is the region’s abundance of prey and its relatively open habitats. Each dry season, water recedes from the floodplains, concentrating wildlife along permanent rivers. Jaguars follow, drawn by the promise of easily accessible prey—such as capybaras and caimans—that congregate at the water’s edge. Over time, some jaguars in this area have grown surprisingly tolerant of human presence. This habituation means that visitors can often observe wild jaguars from boats at a respectful distance. It’s a remarkable wildlife experience, one of the few places on Earth where sightings of the Americas’ largest cat are almost guaranteed during the dry season.
Despite this, jaguars remain under threat. Across their range, the biggest risks they face are retaliatory killings by ranchers, habitat loss, and the escalating toll of climate-related pressures such as drought and fire. Estimates suggest 200–300 jaguars may be killed annually in the Pantanal due to rancher conflicts, significantly impacting local populations. Jaguars are also feeling the effects of relentless habitat conversion on the fringes of their wetland home—land cleared or burned for agriculture, cattle grazing and monocultures. The Pantanal’s delicate water system depends on surrounding ecosystems to maintain the floods and seasonal moisture that nurture biodiversity. When these outer ecosystems are stripped away, the Pantanal suffers—and so do the jaguars.
A Vision for Conservation: The Jaguar Identification Project
Abby Martin’s path to the Pantanal began as many great adventures do: with a single transformative trip. She first traveled to Brazil as a university student in a climate change course. After experiencing the Pantanal’s vibrant landscape and wildlife, Abby was hooked. She soon found her way back, this time as a volunteer jaguar researcher, and her involvement deepened.
In 2013, the Jaguar Identification Project (JIP) was born. Its aim was simple yet ambitious: monitor and identify individual jaguars along the rivers of the northern Pantanal by using their unique spot patterns. Each jaguar’s rosettes—those distinctive clusters of spots—are like fingerprints, allowing scientists and citizen scientists alike to distinguish one cat from another. Early on, Abby saw the potential for citizen science. If travelers and guides could learn to identify jaguars and report sightings, then the project could gather data beyond what any single research team could manage alone.
Initially, Abby faced a steep learning curve. Funding was scarce. She worked as a guide, driving boats of tourists along these jaguar-rich waterways, simultaneously collecting data, snapping photos and encouraging travelers to share their images. Over the years, JIP compiled a growing catalog of hundreds of jaguars, charting births, deaths, arrivals and departures. By 2016, the team published their first Jaguar ID book and began distributing it to lodges and local communities. Soon, visitors were flipping through pages, exclaiming, “I saw Madroza!”—a well-known female jaguar famed for her dramatic river-edge hunting skills, leaping down from logs to ambush caimans below.
JIP’s success hinges on the synergy between research and ecotourism. Every visitor armed with a camera is a potential data collector. When tourists share their photos, they contribute vital snapshots of jaguars that JIP staff might not see themselves. A cat thought to have vanished for years might turn up, revealing she’s still alive and raising cubs. A once-unknown individual can be identified and named.
This flood of citizen data allows researchers to assess changes in jaguar demographics and behavior over time. After the mega-fires of 2020 and subsequent years, Abby’s team detected a fascinating—and initially puzzling—trend. The number of jaguars identified along the rivers soared. At first glance, one might interpret this as a post-fire recovery or even a boon for jaguars. But a closer look reveals a different story.
The fires destroyed vast swaths of the Pantanal’s interior habitat. Jaguars, unable to find suitable shelter and prey in the scorched landscapes, moved toward the rivers—safe havens where water and life persisted. So the population spike at the rivers wasn’t a sign of overall recovery; it was a gathering of refugees seeking the last green corridors of habitat. Long-term data like this, made possible by citizen contributions, help scientists understand how jaguars respond to environmental changes, informing future conservation measures.
Unveiling Hidden Behaviors
With abundant data, JIP has uncovered remarkable jaguar behavior. They’ve documented coalitions of male jaguars—unrelated or distantly related individuals that team up for a competitive edge. They’ve also recorded the first confirmed case of jaguar infanticide, a behavior previously known in other big cats but never before confirmed for jaguars in the wild. These behavioral insights are not only fascinating; they also help predict how jaguars might adapt to climate pressures, shifts in prey availability and changes in habitat quality.
This is research that can have global implications. As climate change intensifies and extreme weather events become more common, understanding how top predators like jaguars respond can guide conservation strategies worldwide. Jaguars serve as umbrella species; safeguarding them helps protect countless other species and the entire ecosystem.
The Importance of Conservation Travel
While tourism provides critical benefits such as funding research and deterring poaching, it must be carefully managed to protect wildlife. Too many boats pursuing limited jaguar sightings can stress the animals and disrupt their hunts, causing them to retreat into dense vegetation. Without proper guidelines and enforcement, excessive tourism pressure can negatively affect both wildlife welfare and the quality of visitor experiences. Conservation travel, however, prioritizes sustainable practices and wildlife protection. In Brazil’s Pantanal, responsible tourism supports the preservation of extraordinary biodiversity, from jaguars and giant otters to vibrant birdlife. It also empowers local communities through sustainable economic opportunities, incentivizes habitat protection, and funds critical scientific research and environmental education. By traveling with Natural Habitat Adventures, guests participate in immersive, expertly guided experiences that place wildlife-friendly practices and meaningful community engagement at their core, directly contributing to the Pantanal’s long-term conservation.
Local Involvement & Long-Term Vision
The Jaguar Identification Project has also become a vehicle for community engagement. Abby and her colleagues have brought local guides, some of whom were once hunters or fishermen, into the fold. These community members now help set up and maintain camera traps deep in the park’s interior—work that’s physically demanding and logistically challenging. Their intimate knowledge of the landscape and its wildlife is invaluable, and their participation ensures that conservation efforts benefit those who live and work in the region.
For the future, Abby dreams of securing more resources, including the possibility of purchasing private lands to act as buffer zones and wildlife corridors. By protecting riverine forests that serve as vital ecological refuges, she hopes to preserve what makes the Pantanal so special—a place where jaguars still roam free and flourishing.
How to Help
JIP’s work shows how a single traveler’s photo or a small donation can contribute to a larger conservation mission. If you’re fortunate enough to visit the Pantanal, consider connecting with the project. Buy a Jaguar Field Guide, share your images and educate yourself about the importance of these forests and wetlands. Even from home, there are ways to help:
Support Conservation Organizations: Reputable NGOs like Panthera and WWF are working to mitigate human-jaguar conflicts and preserve jaguar habitat.
Spread the Word: Educate your friends and family about the importance of preserving the Pantanal and its wildlife.
Conscious Travel: When booking a trip, choose responsible operators who prioritize wildlife welfare and follow best practices for sustainable tourism.
Learn More: Watch the documentarySaving Jaguars and Ourselves, which the Jaguar Identification Project helped produce. It provides deeper insight into climate issues affecting the Pantanal and the steps we can take to safeguard it.
A Legacy Worth Preserving
Sitting in a boat at the meeting of the waters—where rivers converge amid lush gallery forests—one feels the pulse of the Pantanal’s “freshwater heart.” The jaguars that grace these shores have thrived here for millennia, each generation adapting to the changing flood cycles and shifting landscapes. In recent years, that world has been thrown off balance. Yet, as Abby Martin’s work and the dedication of countless citizen scientists show, it’s not too late to help.
The Jaguar Identification Project reminds us that knowledge is power. Each identification, each data point and each traveler’s shared photo deepens our understanding of jaguar life. Armed with that knowledge, we can push for stronger protections, more thoughtful tourism guidelines and better land-use policies. By working together—conservationists, travelers, local communities and the global public—we can ensure that the Pantanal’s jaguars continue to reign in their rightful place, inspiring wonder for generations to come.
Driving across the plains of the Serengeti, every sense becomes sharpened: eyes alert as you scan the horizon, inhaling the mingling scents of lemon bush and wild mint, you listen to the echos of animals calling in the distance, just as Africa has called to you. It’s incomprehensibly special, this land shaped by vast and varied episodes of geology, ecology and history. Our origins are found in Tanzania’s gorges and valleys, the unearthed fossilized bones of our ancestors dating back millions of years. Spanning as long as human existence, we have lived side by side with the other creatures of this planet. It is human nature to want to know where we came from; to seek out the mysteries of our past. We have always sought out a sense of belonging, and perhaps part of what we are searching for is here, in a landscape that can never truly belong to anyone but nevertheless leaves us linked, imprinting on our soul.
As the sun falls, burning red, we quietly approach a black rhinoceros, affectionately known as Mama Julie. She moves slightly, and a tiny calf becomes visible, mere weeks old. Its curled-up form is in stark contrast with the powerful, looming figure of the rhino mother before us—this is nature at her strongest and most vulnerable. It’s a striking end to a safari filled with wildlife spectacles: a cheetah with two cubs feasting on a gazelle, outlined by purple streaks of lightning as the sky unleashes a torrent of rain; a wildebeest struggling against a crocodile in the raging waters of the Mara River; a leopard asleep in a tree, her spotted pelt golden in the dappled sunlight—she lifts her head, piercing green eyes fixed on me. Reflecting on all I have paid witness to, I sit by the fire under a kaleidoscope of stars, caressed by wind and smoke, talking until the coals burn low and become nothing more than glowing embers. Lions call in the distance. I understand what our guide means when he says the Serengeti feels like home.
We leave the following morning, still in a daze at the number of rare species and unique interactions we have encountered. I stare out at the open plains, so expansive I can just make out the curvature of the Earth. Navigating dusty roads, we pass a lioness sunning herself on a termite mound, a recent kill beside her, as zebra graze on viridescent grasses that have sprung forth since the recent rains. Yellow-billed storks snatch fish from a glittering pool as baboons wade in to feed on fragrant water lilies. Over the past two weeks, we have become so accustomed to watching life unfold in the most enthralling and heartwrenching ways.
Beauty among the thorns: a parallel replicated time and again in the savanna, and in our own lives.
We come upon the huddled form of a baby elephant seeking shelter, entirely alone on the endless plains. He flaps his ears, disproportionately large on his small body. His mother is gone. She has died, either of natural causes or poaching, our guide observes. He radios the rangers and tells us this calf is a suitable candidate for a rescue and rehabilitation center like the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Three months before, I had adopted an orphaned elephant, Emoli, from the very same trust in my grandmother’s name. She loves reading updates on the little one’s progress, as he is bottle-fed milk and nestled under Maasai blankets each night, cocooned in warmth. Many elephants have been saved and reintegrated into the wild through the refuge’s inspiring work. Still, during times of drought or spikes in poaching, the number of animals in need grows overwhelming. The gravity of the elephants’ plights is made clear in the graveness of our Expedition Leader’s words: “We can’t afford to lose another one.”
Memories of the Serengeti do not leave you; they live within you, ingrained into your very being. The last pictures I am left with are of the elephant calf, along with the young rhino and cheetah cubs. The future of the Serengeti depends on their survival. The wild animals found here are like no other, and their ecosystem, one of astonishing beauty and inevitable harshness, hangs in a delicate balance. Humans have played their part in throwing that balance off-kilter. But conservation travel has such power; power to change and inspire. The effect of such a place on one’s outlook can be life-altering, leaving us with a desire to preserve and cherish what we were once removed and disconnected from. We begin the process of remembering, retracing our past and laying the groundwork to protect and restore our planet’s future. If we can once again recognize ourselves as a part of the natural world rather than removed from it, then maybe we stand a chance at ensuring the wildlife of the Serengeti lives on forevermore.
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History and geography teachers often point out the silliness of Greenland’s name. The Arctic country is covered with a barren ice sheet spanning 660,000 square miles, or roughly 80% of the country’s surface. There’s not exactly much green to be found!
According to the Icelandic Sagas, Eric the Red, who had been exiled from Iceland for murder, came to Greenland’s glacial shores in the late 10th century and dubbed the place “Grœnland” in the hopes of attracting settlers to the remote outpost with the false promise of abundant forests and fields.
He may have been just a little ahead of his time. Research shows that in the not-too-distant future, climate change could melt the edges of Greenland’s ice sheet, opening up fertile soil for new seeds and plants to take hold. But would a greener Greenland be good for the country—or the planet?
The Greenland ice sheet is losing an average of around 250 billion metric tons of ice per year—and these losses have shown to be speeding up over time. The ice contains enough water to raise global sea levels by 24 feet if all of it melted. The year 2021 marked the 25th year in a row in which the ice sheet lost more mass during the melting season than it gained during the winter.
Warm air temperatures cause melting to occur on the surface of the ice sheet, a process that is responsible for around half the ice Greenland loses each year. The other half comes from glaciers at the ice sheet’s edge crumbling into the sea. When that happens, it churns up the waters—and that turbulence helps heat rise up from deeper parts of the ocean, warming the waters coming into contact with the ice and melting the glaciers even faster.
As a result, Greenland, researchers predict, could soon begin to look a little bit like Alaska or western Canada, though the exact composition of trees and bushes depends upon which species take advantage of the new ecological niches that form when ice uncovers soil.
Greenland is special in so many ways when it comes to ecological conservation. Although it is the 12th-largest country in the world (it’s approximately the size of Western Europe or the main part of the U.S.), Greenland has the lowest population density of any country on the planet. Only 56,000 people call Greenland home; if they were all to spread out, each Greenlander would have about 25 square miles to themselves.
The entire northeast of Greenland is one massive national park that was established in 1974. It’s the largest national park in the world and a sanctuary for Arctic wildlife such as the Arctic fox, collared lemming, Arctic hare and gray wolves.
With so few people and even fewer cars and industry (the longest road for vehicles in the country is only around 20 miles long), Greenland also has some of the purest air in the world. You can drink freely from any of the streams or rivers in the country—no filter required.
Greenland is already greener than most visitors on our East Greenland Arctic Adventure expect. Colorful flowers, lush meadows and hardy plants spring up when the snow starts to melt and the summer’s mild winds blow. Our Expedition Leaders even guide our guests into a place called the Valley of Flowers, where beautiful lakes are ringed with wildflowers.
The vegetation is richest and most diverse in the southwest, which, compared to the rest of the country, has a relatively mild climate with wooded areas in the protected inner fjords. Elsewhere in Greenland, there are tundras with grasses and sedges, carpets of moss, mushrooms, flowering plants like bog rosemary and yellow poppy, and blueberry and crowberry bushes.
Non-native Plants Take Hold as the Planet Heats Up
In 1911, researchers reported that Greenland was home to 310 species of vascular plants, including 15 endemic species. Today that number has jumped up to nearly 500 species and rising. Practically all of Greenland’s native vegetation disappeared during the ice age; the existing plant life came mostly from North America.
How’s that? Well, a study conducted in Svalbard, an archipelago north of Norway with a similar ecosystem as Greenland, found 1,019 seeds of 53 species clinging to just 259 travelers’ shoes upon arrival. Twenty-six of those species germinated in Arctic conditions when given the opportunity. Migratory birds coming from North America have also been found to deposit seeds that had been stuck to their plumage and feet or passed through their bowels.
However, field experiments have confirmed that a range of other species, including Siberian larch, white spruce, lodgepole pine and Eastern balsam poplar, could establish in Greenland if given the chance. Those species, along with the five long-established native varieties, may begin to spread as temperatures warm with climate change.
Researchers built a computer model of Greenland’s predicted climate for the next 100 years, onto which they overlaid with known data for various North American and European tree species’ ideal habitat niches. Within a century, they found, all 56 species of trees and shrubs they tested would likely be ideally suited to take up residence (or expand their reach) in Greenland.
Without help, the researchers’ models indicate that some species of trees would take around 2,000 years to find their way to a newly hospitable patch of Greenland soil. But with tourism and regular flights between continents, the plants will most likely receive some significant accidental colonization assistance. Greenlanders will also most likely start to plant trees themselves, if they believe they could now grow there.
“People often plant utility and ornamental plants where they can grow,” Jens-Christian Svenning, a biologist at Aarhus University, states. “I believe it lies in our human nature.” However, he warns that if Greenland’s greening is left up to the locals, they should proceed with caution.
“The Greenlandic countryside will be far more susceptible to introduced species in the future than it is today,” he said. “So if importing and planting species takes place without any control, this could lead to nature developing in a very chaotic way.”
While “more green” might seem like a win for the environment, the possible shift from mossy tundra to towering forest would almost certainly push out some of Greenland’s native plant and animal species.
On the flip side, new trees may help alleviate some of the erosion issues from quickly melting glaciers and could create recreational or economic possibilities, such as sustainable hunting and foraging for wood and wild edible food. Even just recently, the warming of the Arctic environment has allowed new crops like apples, strawberries, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and carrots to be grown and for the cultivated areas of the country to be extended.
Local Greenlanders are already having to adapt to weather changes. Kaleeraq Mathaeussen, for example, has been fishing since he was 14 years old. Like other locals, he has observed massive changes around him that can’t be ignored. In the past, he used to travel on the ice each winter with a sled pulled by his beloved dogs. But the water no longer freezes like it used to.
“Ever since 2001, I noticed the winter seasons in Disko Bay didn’t have as much ice. I was very worried when I started to notice that the ice barrier was getting weaker. Today it is unpredictable and too dangerous to go fishing with my sled dogs,” he explains.
Mathaeussen stopped sledding two years ago, and now he only feels safe fishing by boat.
And Mathaeussen isn’t alone. Around two decades ago there were around 5,000 dogs in the larger coastal town of Ilulissat alone, but now there are only about 1,800, as many Greenlanders give up this traditional transportation method.
“There’s some negative things. There are also some positive things,” Mathaeussen states. He explains that in some ways, Arctic life has become easier. For instance, nutrients from glacial meltwater are enriching marine life, and with the warmer weather, it’s now possible to fish year-round by boat. Halibut fetch a high price, and fishermen like Mathaeussen are now financially better off because they can fish for a longer season.
With all of these changes happening relatively quickly, the time to visit Greenland is now. On Nat Hab’s East Greenland Arctic Adventure, travelers have the chance to speak to locals firsthand to get their perspective on how climate change is affecting—and will affect—them.
In addition to our time at our Base Camp, we spend time in the tiny village of Tinit, a 20-minute boat ride from camp. Most visitors never get to these remote communities, but our overnight stays allow us to meet the local Greenlandic Inuit, learn about their culture and traditions, and gain an appreciation for the challenges and rewards of life in a rapidly changing modern Greenland.
Consider an upcoming Nat Hab trip to Greenland as the perfect place to unplug, connect with nature, and see for yourself the impact of climate change in the Arctic.
In part one of our two-part Q&A with Aditya Panda, we discussed the veteran guide’s favorite national parks in India, which wildlife travelers will encounter on an India safari, and what it’s like to track tigers in the wild (we’ll never forget his vivid account).
Here, the passionate conservationist, wildlife photographer and Expedition Leader with Natural Habitat Adventures shares his insights on India’s immense conservation successes—including in Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Kaziranga national parks, all featured on Nat Hab’s Grand India Wildlife Adventure—the imperative of ecotourism, and the pivotal role travelers can play in preserving India’s wild places.
What are key conservation successes you’ve seen in Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Kaziranga?
Kanha brought back the hard-ground swamp deer (barasingha) from the brink of extinction. They were down to 66 in 1970. Today, nearly a thousand barasingha adorn the meadows of Kanha, and about 100 have been reintroduced to form a second “insurance” population at Satpura Tiger Reserve, 300 miles away.
Bandhavgarh lost its entire population of gaur (India bison) in the 1990s. The species was reintroduced in the following decade and now the world’s largest wild bovine is well established there again. Both these reserves are flagships of India’s tiger conservation efforts and are home to some of the largest breeding populations of tigers.
Kaziranga has seen a century of conservation. The greater one-horned rhinoceros is one of the best conservation success stories of the 20th century, and Kaziranga single-handedly deserves credit for that. These reserves have consistently exhibited the strongest protection approaches and well-managed tourism practices that directly benefit conservation.
Which threats remain to national parks in India?
India is the world’s second-most populous country and is extremely land-starved. Holding aside land for wildlife is an inherently conflicted matter. High rates of infrastructural growth and increasing urbanization mean that wildlife landscapes are fragmented. Large mammals are usually wide-ranging creatures and require unhindered right of way through natural landscapes across vast distances.
There are also threats from extractive livelihood practices. Grazing livestock in wildlife habitats not only causes deer and wild ungulates to be outcompeted for forage, but it also brings in the risk of communicable diseases to wildlife. Predation of livestock by tigers and leopards causes human-wildlife conflict. The collection of forest products such as firewood, fruit and resins also causes habitat deterioration, forest fires and human-wildlife conflict. And the threat of poaching always exists. This can range from snaring and bushmeat hunting that depletes prey base for large carnivores to the poaching of tigers, leopards, Asian elephants and one-horned rhinoceros for the international trade in wild animal parts.
Fortunately, the nature parks we visit on the Grand India Wildlife Adventure are living examples of how these challenges to wildlife conservation can be effectively managed. That’s why they’re such rich repositories of wildlife, enabling us to enjoy and learn about these beautiful animals and their habitats that we so love.
Is ecotourism essential to saving India’s wildlife sanctuaries?
Yes. It is absolutely essential. It’s no coincidence that the most famous reserves on India safari itineraries are the ones that have consistently shown best conservation practices and wildlife population growth.
The most important way in which ecotourism benefits conservation is that it offers local communities a more positive way to interact with surrounding habitats. With shrinking forests and exponential growth in human population, resource-extractive livelihood practices are no longer sustainable for communities that live around forests. Ecotourism offers much better and safer livelihoods. The best thing is that these opportunities occur at scale, benefitting many villages, and aren’t token. Jobs include park guides, jeep drivers and owners, lodge staff, suppliers and owners, and many wildlife tourism entrepreneurs. The opportunities are endless.
Ecotourism also earns direct revenues for the reserves, providing large amounts of liquid funds used to address human-wildlife conflicts, hire additional protection and fund research. What’s more, travelers on an India safari serve as additional eyes that not only keep away poachers and timber smugglers but also help monitor the state of our reserves.
The most long-term impact of ecotourism, though, is the goodwill it builds for wildlife in the hearts of people. Indian wildlife reserves are visited not just by overseas visitors but also a very large proportion of domestic travelers. These ecotourists not only educate themselves about the natural world but also become more aware of it, and this, in turn, helps build a better society that values wildlife and wild spaces.
What are tangible actions travelers can take to help protect India’s wildlife?
The single most important thing that a prospective ecotourist can do is to find a responsible, ethical travel company with a strong background in sustainable travel. This will automatically ensure that at every stage of their journey, the company will strive toward carbon neutrality, responsible practices, meaningful conservation education and a meaningful nature experience.
And when we return home?
As a Nat Hab Expedition Leader, I deeply love what I do. Combined with the kind of wilderness experience visitors enjoy here, the magnetic charm of the tiger, the heartwarming sight of elephant families, it’s only natural that my passion rubs off on them, and they turn into ambassadors for India’s wildlife. Because thousands of livelihoods depend upon guests, one of the best things travelers can do when they return home is to encourage others to visit high conservation-value destinations like Bandhavgarh, Kanha and Kaziranga.
Public discourse has always played a great influence on conservation policies. The opinions that international travelers provide—be it directly to the park management, local governments or even their own governments—along with what’s discussed on social media always play a big role in drawing attention to conservation issues. Something as simple as guests providing a slideshow from their Grand India Wildlife Adventure at a local club or community center can trigger interest and awareness about wildlife conservation in India. Last, but not least, by traveling with Nat Hab, you’re also contributing to World Wildlife Fund‘s global conservation efforts.
By Bas Huijbregts, WWF African Species Director for the Wildlife Conservation Program, and Jake Sokol, WWF Senior Director of Philanthropy of the Eastern Region
“Look at that strange rock!” one of our guests proclaimed upon arrival at our first lodge on Impalila Island, a secluded treasure tucked away in Namibia’s Zambezi region, on the border of Botswana’s Chobe National Park.
Through scenic flights, 4×4 safari trucks and aboard the Zimbabwean Dream, a beautiful ship built for Lake Kariba, we saw how WWF is working with communities, conservation partners, governments, and the private sector to protect KAZA’s iconic wildlife and their habitat and support the socioeconomic well-being of local communities. We visited four diverse national parks, including Zimbabwe’s famous Hwange and Botswana’s Chobe, and concluded in spectacular Victoria Falls on the majestic Zambezi River, one of the world’s largest waterfalls, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Map of our Southern Africa Odyssey
In 2011, KAZA’s five member countries—Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe—signed a Treaty to collectively manage a transboundary conservation landscape larger than California in an initiative that ranks among the world’s most ambitious conservation endeavors. Spanning the Zambezi and Okavango River systems, the landscape’s woodlands, wetlands, and grasslands provide continuous habitat not only for our frog, but also for over 600 bird species, 25% of the world’s wild dog population, 20% of the world’s lions, 15% of the world’s cheetahs, and many, many elephants.
KAZA holds the planet’s largest connected population of elephants, enabling them to move across borders and between protected areas. In 2022, the KAZA countries, supported by WWF, undertook the first-ever coordinated and synchronized elephant survey of the entire landscape. Following 195 flights over 2 months, using 7 aircraft, and having flown 1.8 times the Earth’s circumference, elephant experts estimated that KAZA holds a staggering 227,900 African savanna elephants, over 50% of the total population of this species. And wherever we went, from Chobe National Park in Botswana to Matusadona on the southern shores of Lake Kariba and Hwange National Parks in Zimbabwe, we met them. Everywhere. But in these semi-arid landscapes we also saw the impact that these majestic animals have on the landscape.
In 2024, following an exceptionally poor rainy season, triggering drought conditions throughout the region, four of the five KAZA countries (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) declared a State of Emergency due to the drought. Elephants need between 30-50 gallons of water per day for drinking, in addition to bathing and playing. This influences their daily activities, reproduction, and migration, and can lead to human-elephant conflict. To prevent elephants from leaving protected areas in search of water in human settlements, most protected areas in KAZA have installed artificial water sources, especially near tourism lodges.
All those thirsty elephants dominate the waterholes, chasing off other species. With no other sources of water available to them in the dry season, the elephants also stay near these water points, overexploiting the surrounding ecosystems.
Elephant movements in KAZA are further restricted by various human barriers. Park fences, erected to keep dangerous wildlife in and poachers out, limit elephant movements. Veterinary fences, erected to separate wildlife from cattle to avoid disease transmission, have also fragmented the landscape. KAZA’s elephants also need to share the landscape with 2,5 million people, 537,000 cows, and 174,000 sheep and goats. Finally, historically large-scale elephant poaching in parts of KAZA, such as during the civil war in Angola, has further contributed to the uneven distribution of elephants across the landscape. For instance, Botswana’s part of KAZA holds about 132,000 elephants, whereas in Angola, only 5,983 elephants were counted during the KAZA elephant survey.
And here lies the challenge: In places where elephant numbers are increasing in KAZA, they pose a threat to diminishing riverine and woodland habitats and the species dependent upon such habitats. Also, increasing elephant populations, combined with human population growth and human settlements, are leading to increases in human-elephant conflict. This could “push” elephants away from those areas. On the other hand, the KAZA portions of Angola and Zambia have large tracts of suitable elephant habitat, but with smaller populations of elephants and other wildlife (and lower human densities), which could “pull” elephants.
To assure landscape connectivity across KAZA in a changing climate and allow KAZA’s elephants to freely move from densely populated areas to areas with greatly reduced elephant numbers, a Strategic Planning Framework for the Conservation and Management of Elephants in KAZA was developed and endorsed by the partner states in 2019 with as its vision: “KAZA’s elephants, the largest viable and contiguous population in Africa, are conserved to the benefit of people and nature within a diverse and productive landscape”.
Important progress has been made since then. Because of the KAZA elephant survey, we now have accurate information on elephant numbers and their spatial distribution across the landscape. In addition, and based on analysis of 3.9 million GPS observations from 291 collared elephants, we have also been able to map elephant movements across KAZA over the last decade or so, which resulted in the identification of the most prevalent movement routes and elephant corridors.
Those (transboundary) elephant movement corridors are in various stages of intactness and face the potential threat of permanent closure due to encroaching human settlements, agriculture and infrastructure developments (e.g. roads, rail), livestock disease control measures (veterinary cordon fences), and potential mining developments.
Securing and connecting (or re-connecting) these corridors for elephants across KAZA is our collective crucially important mission for the coming years.
Leopards are beautiful, solitary creatures. Male leopards defend their territories by “roaring”—a rough rasp, like a handsaw cutting wood—and scent-marking, while females use their calls to attract mates and keep track of cubs. A new study found remarkable genetic diversity in these extraordinary cats.
In addition to being beautiful, African leopards are adaptable, elusive and versatile animals. Now, we can add genetically diverse to that list. That’s because researchers recently published the first genomic data on the big cats, and the facts showed exceptionally high genetic diversity compared to that of other top predators, transforming our understanding of population dynamics in species at the top of the food chain.
Unfortunately, humans are detrimentally affecting leopard numbers. As we increasingly move into leopard territories, we disturb and unbalance ecosystems. In addition, human communities tend to tolerate hyenas living nearby, further putting the livelihoods of leopards at risk.
Efforts to protect leopards, though, are getting a new boost. In the first large-scale, paired camera trap and autonomous recording survey for large African carnivores, researchers were able to identify individual leopards by their vocalizations with a 93% accuracy. The study is being hailed as an important first step towards using bioacoustics in the conservation of leopards.
We humans continue to encroach on wilderness areas. As we do, we impact wildlife. It was recently shown that human disturbance upsets the balance between competing species like leopards and hyenas, and that this advantages hyenas.
Typically, large carnivores are sensitive to ecosystem changes because their specialized diets and positions at the top of trophic pyramids are associated with small population sizes. This, in turn, leads to lower genetic diversity in top predators compared to animals that are lower down on the food chain. Genetic diversity is extremely important for a species’ ability to survive and adapt to future changes.
In a study, published in the journal Current Biology in May 2021, researchers in Denmark and the U.S. sequenced the complete genomes of 53 African leopards and compared them to that of Amur leopards and other big cat species. To their surprise, they found that the genetic diversity of African leopards is extremely high: almost five times higher than that of cheetahs, four times higher than that of Amur leopards and twice as high as that of lions.
The scientists believe that the exceptional genetic diversity found in African leopards is likely a result of the animal’s ability to avoid population crashes and reductions. During hundreds of thousands of years, African leopard populations have remained large. This is believed to reflect the versatility of the species; African leopards feed on a wider variety of prey than any of the other large predators.
Throughout history, leopards have roamed Africa more freely than almost any other mammal species, exchanging genetic material around the continent. These big cats now have a wide range of genetic diversity and a unique ability to succeed in almost any climate and habitat.
But the high genetic diversity found in African leopards is not the only surprise hidden in the genomes. The researchers also found fewer genetic barriers than with other mammal species. During evolutionary history, leopards roamed Africa more freely than almost any other mammal species, exchanging genetic material throughout the continent. Leopards have a unique ability to succeed in almost any climate and habitat, and neither rain forests nor deserts seem to have blocked their movements over millennia. The stunning findings demonstrate how the ecology of a species—such as how picky it is about habitat and prey—can influence its genomic variation.
This exceptionally high genetic diversity could give the African leopard an advantage in coping with environmental challenges, such as climate change and habitat fragmentation and destruction. However, today the human-made changes to natural habitats are occurring at a pace that is likely too fast for almost any wild animal species to adapt to, and previous studies have shown that African leopards have already lost 48% to 67% of their natural habitats over the last 300 years.
Leopard disadvantage: tolerating hyenas hurts big cats
Unfortunately, leopards have become unpopular with many people in local communities because the big cats may hunt livestock and attack humans. Hyenas, on the other hand, are seen as animals that don’t pose a problem for humans because they “clean up” by eating sick or dead livestock.
Leopards hunt alone, whereas hyenas hunt in large groups, which can be an advantage for hyenas in confrontations with leopards. Hyenas are kleptoparasites that regularly steal the prey of other carnivores—including leopards.
While hyenas seem to be increasing in numbers, the population of leopards has been in significant decline for decades, both in Africa and worldwide. Since in many areas hyenas are leopards’ only competitors, the ability of the two species to coexist is important for their survival. But when local people don’t like leopards, the leopards retreat as far away from them as possible. Hyenas, on the other hand, benefit from the fact that humans don’t feel threatened by or pursue them. Consequently, hyenas live close to human populations and may even exploit humans as shields against the leopards.
The areas nearest to humans, however, are also the areas with the most prey. And as hyenas assert dominance in these places, they increase their odds of outcompeting leopards and potentially threaten the big cats’ adaptability.
Recently, researchers at Denmark’s University of Copenhagen closely studied this dynamic in a large, East African natural area surrounded by rural settlements. For months, they used camera traps to observe the interactions between hyenas and leopards living in Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains National Park, a 768-square-mile tract that is surrounded by agricultural and populated areas. It’s the first study to combine camera observations of large predators over both time and space in a single analysis.
Leopards can’t differentiate between safari tourists and poachers. Despite their predatory instincts and immense power, however, over time the animals learn to perceive safari vehicles as nonthreatening entities.
In June 2024, the study’s results—which were published in the science journal Ecosphere —demonstrated that the presence of humans has a direct impact on the competitive relationship between hyenas and leopards. And size matters: while male leopards, which are larger, retain their dominance over hyenas, the situation is different for female leopards, which are smaller. Even though the male leopards are the ones in charge, the hyenas aren’t exactly scared off by them. They simply hang out in the background—probably to follow the leopards and steal their prey. The physical inferiority of the hyenas seems to be compensated for in the areas closest to humans, because male leopards pull out. Female leopards, on the other hand, completely change their behavior when hyenas are in the area. They become diurnal, whereas hyenas are primarily nocturnal. This is probably because the smaller female leopards would likely lose in any fight over prey.
This shift in female leopard hunting patterns could have negative consequences. If more roads are built in the national park, female leopards will feel the pressure immediately. They can’t differentiate between safari tourists and poachers; although in time, they will probably learn that safari guests aren’t dangerous. A large and rapid influx into the area, however, will probably still cause leopard populations to decline. And if leopards are seriously pressured out of the food chain, the emergence of what are known as cascade effects in the ecosystem can be expected. Populations of other species, such as certain monkeys, that are usually kept in check by leopards will suddenly become too large and will change the balance of the entire ecosystem.
Since the study’s results clearly indicate that human disturbances can change the competitive relationship between important predators, the scientists hope that the findings will serve to encourage restraint when it comes to managing wilderness areas. When expanding activities into such spots, they suggest rolling them out slowly to give animals a chance to adapt. Furthermore, they state, the effects of human disturbances should be monitored in more places using camera traps.
Leopards are major predators of primates, including red colobus monkeys. The big cats keep monkey populations in check, so plucking leopards out of a food chain may change the balance of the entire ecosystem.
The researchers conclude that the ability of hyenas to adapt to areas of human activity may strengthen their overall success as a species and their competitive advantage over other large predators as we disturb more and more natural areas.
Leopard aid: establishing caller ID helps conservation
Due to habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict, leopards are now listed as vulnerable to extinction, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. But because leopards are solitary, nocturnal creatures that live across huge expanses of terrain, scientists struggle to gather reliable data that would help them reverse their population declines.
But bioacoustics—monitoring animals through the sounds they make, most typically used with birds and marine species—could allow researchers to watch much larger areas. That could lead to more complex studies, such as population estimates, a key metric for helping policymakers and conservation practitioners understand how to better manage landscapes and mitigate human-wildlife conflicts.
In a groundbreaking camera trap and autonomous recording survey for large African carnivores, researchers were able to identify individual leopards by their vocalizations with 93% accuracy.
There is little scientific research about the “sawing” sounds of leopards—repeated, low-frequency patterns of strokes, often audible from up to two miles away and used primarily to attract mates and for territorial defense. So, a research team made up of scientists from England’s University of Exeter, University of Oxford, the Tanzania National Parks Authority, the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute and other colleagues, conducted a study across a 173-square-mile expanse of the Nyerere National Park in Tanzania, where they attached 50 pairs of cameras to trees along roads and trails.
The scientists placed microphones next to each camera so that they could visually identify each leopard and then extract the animal’s calls from the audio. They then used a modeling system to analyze the temporal patterns of leopard sounds. They found individual identification was possible, with an overall accuracy of 93.1%. The results were published in the Zoological Society of London’s journal Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation in December 2024.
The researchers say that discovering that leopards have unique “roars” was an important—but fundamentally quite basic—finding that shows how little we know about leopards and large carnivores, in general. They hope it will allow leopards to become the focus of more acoustically complex science, such as population density studies, and open the door to more work on how large carnivores use vocalizations as a tool. In addition, their success in using a combination of different types of technology could, hopefully, lead others to do the same in their own research, resulting in rich data that will push science ahead and help us understand ecosystems and landscapes in a much more holistic way.
Building predator-proof bomas goes beyond livestock safety—it’s about creating a sustainable future where communities and wildlife thrive side by side. By reducing the need for retaliatory predator killings and fostering a culture of coexistence, these bomas maintain the delicate balance of ecosystems.
Leopard longevity: weaving a fabric sustains ecosystems
Despite being a genetic success, the African leopard is facing severe threats to its survival. Climate change, habitat fragmentation and loss, human persecution, retaliatory killings and poaching all take their toll.
Our relationship with one predator species alone can alter whole ecosystems. That’s why we need to work closely with the people that live close to leopards, especially those in pastoral communities, to institute preventative measures to protect livestock from predation. Actions like building bomas, predator-proof enclosures that keep livestock safe from carnivores, can prevent both livestock and carnivore deaths.
The key to ensuring the future of leopards seems to lie in an integrated approach to conservation—technological and otherwise—that looks not only at the big cats themselves but at the needs of local people, land use and the ecosystem as a whole.
Ecologists are applying novel ideas and technologies to uncover fascinating new insights into our natural world. As we’re learning, conservation is so much more than keeping animals and landscapes fenced off and apart. It’s integrating them into a tight-knit fabric of community.
As we’re learning, conservation is so much more than keeping animals and places fenced off and apart. It’s integrating them into one, lovely, tight-knit fabric of community.
Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,
Often referred to as the “eighth continent,” the island nation of Madagascar has developed its own distinct ecosystems and extraordinary wildlife since it split from the African continent an estimated 160 million years ago. Approximately 95% of Madagascar’s reptiles, 89% of its plant life and 92% of its mammals exist nowhere else on Earth.
The ZZuss of the Silky Sifaka
Among these endemic species is one of the rarest mammals on the planet, the critically endangered silky sifaka lemur (Propithecus candidus) of the Indriidaefamily. Named after the Malagasy word shif-auk—which sounds like the lemur’s echoing calls, and known by local communities as the “angel of the forest,” this arboreal primate is one of few animals known to “sing” like humans.
Silky sifakas live in the humid terrain of northeastern Madagascar, where they feed on a variety of leaves, fruits and flowers. This lemur is characterized by silky, snow-white fur, which contrasts starkly with its deep yellow eyes. This species inhabits Marojejy National Park, Anjanaharibe-Sud reserve, Makira Natural Park and the COMATSA-Sud protected area.
Silky sifakas live in small family groups—also called a conspiracy—of two to nine individuals. Their social structure is either polygynous with a single adult male and multiple adult females (seldom more than 2), or pair-bonded with one adult female. Like other lemurs, communication is achieved through a combination of olfactory, visual and aural cues. In addition to scent-marking, body posturing and facial gestures, silky sifakas communicate through a plethora of auditory forms.
While the evolution and exact function of these vocalizations require further study, scientists have observed that the songs serve to establish and maintain social bonds, assert dominance and define territorial boundaries and signify impending threats.
Silky sifakas practice a unique form of locomotion, remaining upright as they leap from tree to tree with their powerful hind legs, clearing distances of more than 30 feet through the dense canopy. They can also move quickly on the ground, which they do using a two-legged sideways hop.
Adult eastern sifakas have an estimated seven call types, and infants utter several specialized vocalizations as well. The most frequently emitted calls are low-amplitude, low-frequency, tonal “hums” and “mums,” which convey relational connections, group movements and foraging intel. The loudest vocalizations are alarms, which are produced by all group members in response to terrestrial disturbances, encroaching predators and calls or howls made by other conspiracies.
Their most distinct alarm call is a “zzuss” vocalization, which sounds like a sneeze and is produced with a closed mouth. Studies have revealed that “zzuss” vocalizations are individually distinctive and even vary between males and females.
The Categorical Calls of the Indri
The Betsimisaraka tribal name for the indri species, ‘babakoto’, means ‘ancestor of man’ in Malagasy.
One of the most well-known singing lemurs is the indri (Indri indri), the largest of the lemur species. Their bellowing cries are recognizable from more than a mile away and they radiate a varied vocal repertoire that reverberates through the rain forest. Indris music may not be the most melodic to the human ear; their songs have been likened to squished bagpipes and a pod of moaning whales. However, despite their unique way of carrying a tune, indris exhibit a comprehensive understanding of complex rhythmic patterns.
Indris resemble gangly, black-and-white teddy bears with piercing green eyes. They are often spotted Andasibe-Mantadia National Park (Perinet Reserve)
Indris live in a conspiracy of two to six members, comprising two adults and their offspring, with females serving as the dominant sex. As soon as the morning sun breaches the canopy, the parents perform a temporally coordinated lament; their duet is followed by a cacophonous chorus by the young. Being part of a family band not only reinforces their bond, but it wards off unwanted attention from competing conspiracies and hungry predators.
“Categorical rhythms in a singing primate,” published in Current Biology in 2021 best captures the significance of lemur communication. Over a 12-year period, researchers from the University of Turin in Italy sampled approximately one percent of all living indri individuals. Led by Primatologist Chiara De Gregorio, the team recorded 636 songs from 20 indri groups—a combined 39 individuals.
The results revealed that the lemurs’ songs matched two rhythmic categories: a 1:1 rhythm—a pace akin to a metronome; and a 1:2 rhythm—like the stomp-stomp-clap of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Additionally, when indris sing, they gradually decrease their tempo—described in musical terms as ritardando. The team discovered that male and female indris may produce different singing tempi and interval durations, but 1:1 ratios are the same between sexes, which suggests that sexual selection should not affect the evolution of isochrony in indris.
Shared Songs Between Humans & Non-Human Animals
Indri lemur singing
Before De Gregorio’s groundbreaking study, scientists only knew that humans and certain songbirds, such as nightingale thrushes, followed 1:1 categorical rhythms. Humans’ and indris’ last common ancestor is thought to have lived 77.5 million years ago, implying that this trait evolved independently among singing species, possibly to aid song coordination, processing and learning.
“There is longstanding interest in understanding how human musicality evolved, but musicality is not restricted to humans,” explains Andrea Ravignani, a biomusicologist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. “Looking for musical features in other species allows us to build an ‘evolutionary tree’ of musical traits and understand how rhythm capacities originated and evolved in humans.”
An Evolutionary Tree of Musical Traits
Indris lemur
The discovery of the musical abilities possessed by indris and thrushes begs the question of whether other singing animals, like whales, use these sorts of rhythms too. “To my knowledge, research like ours has never been done in cetaceans, such as whales and dolphins,” confirmed Ravignani.
Though research on marine melodies may still be in its infancy, new findings are being made in Israel’s Ein Gedi Natural Reserve, where rock hyraxes—rabbit-size mammals whose closest relative is the elephant—are garnering the attention of scientists with their siren songs. To humans, their notes sound like a cross between a hyena’s cackle and chalk screeching against a blackboard. But to the swooning female hyraxes, each chorus is a power ballad, demonstrating their fitness.
Researchers have observed that hyrax songs build in complexity as they approach a climatic finish. They’ve also found that while resident males produce frequent songs with steady rhythm, they decrease in complexity after the males assume authority of another group.
Madagascar’s wildlife is threatened by demands from global markets and from the growing needs of the local population. The island’s forests are predicted to diminish by as much as 93% by 2070. Ongoing land conversion and destruction for agriculture and logging has greatly reduced lemur habitat. Hunting for meat and poaching for the exotic pet trade has also contributed to the species’ decline. Today, fewer than 250 silky sifakas exist and some experts estimate that as few as 1,000 indris remain in the wild.
Each year on October 28, we celebrate World Lemur Day in acknowledgment that 98% of lemur species are endangered. According to the report “Primates in peril 2022 – 2023,” four species of lemurs are among the 25 most threatened mammal species in the world, including Microcebus berthae, Lepilemur septentrionalis, Eulemur flavifrons and Propithecus coquereli.
These charismatic species, which evolved here over millions of years, may become extinct before the end of the century. Fortunately, World Wildlife Fund aims to protect, restore and maintain Madagascar’s unique biodiversity in harmony with the culture and livelihoods of the local people. WWF’s Travel Partnership with Natural Habitat Adventures ensures a future for the island’s people and species, and amplifies the voices of the lemurs so their songs can be heard for years to come.
We were thrilled when some good news about one of the planet’s most beloved pollinators recently winged its way to us: The eastern monarch butterfly population nearly doubled over the past year, according to a new survey by World Wildlife Fund!
While that might sound disheartening, strangely enough, it may have been one of the best things that could have happened to Danaus plexippus, a tiny, spotted powerhouse that travels nearly 3,000 miles from the northern United States and southern Canada to its overwintering destination in the Highlands of Central Mexico.
Every year, millions of golden-orange monarchs gather to rest and mate in the oyamel fir forests before migrating back to the states, where they lay their eggs on the milkweed plants that serve as a food source for the caterpillars.
Although monarch populations have been in decline for years, it was only after the monarch was classified as “Endangered,” that the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico finally had the scientific backing to collaborate with conservation organizations and the private sector on initiatives designed to restore, conserve and sustainably manage the ecosystems of this emblematic pollinator.
Monarch Numbers on the Rise in Mexico
The new survey , which measures the area of forest occupied by monarchs within the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve during the last two weeks of December, is implemented every year by WWF-Mexico and Mexico’s National Commission of Protected Natural Areas in collaboration with local communities.
Court Whelan
The monarch population wintering in central Mexico’s forests this year occupied 4.42 acres, up from 2.22 acres during the previous winter. This could be due to less severe drought than in previous years along the butterflies’ migration route.
Another potential supporting factor: Forest degradation in the core zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve recently decreased by 10%. Between April 2023 and February 2024, 9.14 acres of forest were damaged. While that might not sound like good news, that was a decrease from the 10.13 acres of damage reported the previous year.
Forest degradation is most often caused by illegal logging, drought and the removal of trees to prevent disease spread. Monarchs require large, healthy forests to help protect them from winds, rain and low nighttime temperatures.
“The big difference is that the new WWF monarch numbers are comparing only two years: the 2023/24 season to the 2024/25 migratory season,” he says. “But if you were to compare since 2000, the area monarchs occupy is down from 44 acres to 4 acres. So, while they’re up this year from roughly 2 acres to 4 acres, that’s still a big decrease over 25 years.”
Court Whelan
The news underscores the importance of local protection of butterfly habitat, says Jorge Rickards, director general of WWF Mexico.
“We recognize the key role of local communities, as well as the support of the government of Mexico in conserving the forest and providing this iconic species with the opportunity to thrive,” he says. “It’s now time to turn this year’s increase into a lasting trend with an all-hands approach where governments, landowners, conservationists, and citizens continue to safeguard critical habitats along the monarch’s North American migratory route.”
Now that this year’s numbers are in, scientists will analyze the increase and try to understand the correlation and causation behind it. Those results can inform and drive future conservation actions.
“We’re basically trying to understand what efforts pack the biggest bang for our buck in terms of research and conservation initiatives both old and new,” Whelan explains.
Current Threats to Monarch Butterflies
Although the annual monarch population in Mexico has increased, these beloved butterflies still face many threats. Most of their challenges are related to milkweed, the only plant in which the butterflies lay their eggs and from which monarch caterpillars feed. Climatic variations great impact the abundance of milkweed. Land-use changes in the United States, combined with the widespread use of herbicides and insecticides, also create a massive decline of milkweed.
Unfortunately, although this year held positive news for the monarchs, other butterfly species haven’t fared well, also largely because of insecticide use, climate change and loss of habitat. In the United States, the number of butterflies overall is down 22% since 2000, with populations in the Lower 48 states falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century.
Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University, says that while the annual rate of decline may not sound significant, it becomes “catastrophic and saddening” when compounded over time. “In just 30 or 40 years we are talking about losing half the butterflies (and other insect life) over a continent,” Haddad says.
Currently in the U.S., 114 butterfly species show significant declines. For example, the red admiral population is down 44%, the American lady butterfly population decreased by 58%, and even the invasive white cabbage butterfly fell by 50%, according to Collin Edwards, a quantitative ecologist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
With 80% of agricultural food production dependent on pollinators like monarchs, protecting them is of utmost importance. Luckily, there are a few easy things you can do to help!
Plant Milkweed and Native Flowers
Intentionally planting in your yard is an ideal place to start. Native milkweed starts can be found at MonarchWatch.org and will give the adult butterflies a place to lay their eggs in the spring.
But don’t stop just at milkweed. An abundance of native flowers of all types in your yard won’t just beautify your yard—it will also help fuel the monarchs on their long trip back to Mexico in the fall.
Chuck Sevilla
Buy Local and Organic
Buying produce that was grown without the use of herbicides and pesticides incentivizes farmers to grow food in a way that supports natural habitat for the monarchs, rather than eliminating wildflowers across millions of acres of cropland.
Help Monitor Monarchs
You can also play your part as a citizen scientist by recording your sightings of milkweed and breeding monarchs at monarchmilkweedmapper.org.
See Monarchs Sustainably
If you want to truly immerse yourself in the world of butterflies, consider joining us on one of our upcoming Kingdom of the Monarch trips to the forested Central Highlands of Mexico. On both foot and horseback, you can access an oyamel fir tree forest in two different monarch reserves to experience what it’s like to be in the presence of literally millions of monarchs—so many that you can actually hear the beating of their vivid orange wings at times!
Court Whelan
Conservation travel helps demonstrate to locals that ecotourism can be a more viable and sustainable source of economic well-being than resource exploitation. Although you may not be able to change the world in every way you’d like, intentional actions like supporting causes that you’re passionate about can make a difference!
Explore Mexico’s Central Highlands to observe and help protect endangered monarch butterflies on Nat Hab’s Kingdom of the Monarchs adventure.
In 1994, a lone wolf crossed the border from Italy into Switzerland. Within a year, there were two, then pups and sporadic sightings.
By 2012, Switzerland had its first stable wolf pack in well over 100 years.
The pack’s dominant female, known as F07, was first spotted by a camera trap in the canton of Grisons in southeastern Switzerland (where Davos, Klosters and St. Moritz are) in 2011 when she was a year or two old.
For nine years, F07 lived with the same mate, M30, on the Calanda Massif above the city of Chur—one of the longest continuously inhabited (by humans) places in Europe. They had 46 pups together in 8 litters.
Their pack was called Calanda, and their offspring have spread throughout the Alps and paired with wolves from Italy and France.
The Calanda pack has disbanded but has led to many more. By mid-2023, Switzerland had at least 200 wolves in about 25 packs roaming primarily in alpine environments.
By 2025, Switzerland had more than 300 wolves.
Reintroducing Wolves to Yellowstone, Montana
Wolves returned to Yellowstone around the same time as Switzerland, but quite differently. On January 12, 1995 a horse trailer carrying Canadian wolves passed through the gate into Yellowstone National Park’s northwest entrance. Wolves had been absent from the park for nearly 70 years.
From 1995 to 1997, 41 wolves from Canada and northwest Montana were released in Yellowstone and dispersed to establish territories outside the park.
As of January 2024, at least 124 wolves roamed Yellowstone National Park in ten packs. Wolves in Yellowstone sit at the core of a larger population—approximately 500 wolves—throughout the much larger 34,375 square mile Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Gray wolf pack, Yellowstone National Park
Shared Gray Wolf Controversy
There are similarities and differences as wolves return to Switzerland and Yellowstone. One thing is nearly identical: it’s controversial.
Set in Gardiner, Montana just outside Yellowstone National Park, Nat Hab Film’s Big Bad Wolf shares conservation challenges and local perspective on the reintroduction of wolves. One resident said, “I’ve yet to find anyone who’s totally neutral about wolves; I think everyone has a strong opinion.”
The debate sounds different because it’s shaped by local culture, but almost everywhere people are taking sides on how wolves should be managed.
Economics & Culture Impact Opinions on Wolves
Around Gardiner, Montanathe economic value of wolf conservation travelis massive. One local study found that in 2022 wolf-viewing brought at least $82 million into the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In the same year and county, the state paid out only $3,243 to ranchers for two wolf-related livestock deaths.
In Switzerland tourism of a different kind shapes thee debate. The pastoral culture that has developed in Switzerland over the last 150 years values freedom, peace and tranquility (read: quiet). The mountains have become hikers’ paradise, where herds of sheep, cattle and goats graze Alpine meadows unfenced and almost always unattended.
Letting sheep roam the Alps unattended during summer is a cherished Swiss tradition. Neither shepherds nor livestock guardian dogs have been widely used here in generations.
The Swiss debate on wolves is marked by a surprising, vocal resistance to livestock guardian dogs and fences. In some locales voters have even called for a complete ban of livestock guardian dogs, arguing that they scare off alpine tourists. Most news coverage of livestock guardian dogs frames them as costs to taxpayers.
When it comes to livestock guardian dogs, I am biased. I arrived alone in Switzerland from the U.S. with a Great Pyrenees-German Shepherd mix I met at the Boulder Valley Humane Society when he was only 8 weeks old. I always say I’m never sure who rescued whom.
Now, years later, my husband and I live with a pure-bred Great Pyrenees. We’ve encountered more negative reactions than we imagined—nevermind wolves, a shocking number of Swiss people (in the German-speaking cantons especially) are unaccustomed to—and afraid of—our thoroughly domesticated, furry family member. It’s not something I expected from the culture here.
Debates on wolf protection and management are far more about us than them. In fact, the data on wolves tells a very different story from public opinion.
In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, less than one-tenth of one percent of livestock in wolf-occupied areas is lost to wolves. In Europe, wolf predation represents an annual killing of 0.065%. The impact of wolves on livestock is minimal.
In Switzerland, in the first 6 months of 2023, as the number of wolves increased, the number of attacks on livestock actually decreased due to increased protective measures, such as anti-wolf fencing.
About five times as many Alpine sheep are killed every year by falls, rockfalls, parasites, lightning and disease than by wolves.
WWF has since stated in no uncertain terms: “Wolves in Europe are NOT dangerous to humans. There have been no fatal attacks on humans reported in Europe in the 21st century.”
In truth, the big bad wolf is not that big a problem.
Wolf Management in Montana & Switzerland
And yet in Switzerland and Yellowstone, wolf management policies are complicated, contested and shifting. Programs exist to compensate farmers and support more biodiverse protection of livestock, but at the heart of the debate, management means hunting.
Both Switzerland and Montana have reduced wolf protections in recent years.
Gray wolves and magpies in Montana
Effective January 4, 2021, reduced U.S. federal protections affected wolves in at least 44 states. During the 2021-2022 hunting season, 24 wolves from Yellowstone National Park were killed in neighboring states. Hundreds more wolves were killed—roughly 270 in Montana, 500 in Idaho and 30 in Wyoming. Montana and Idaho have been producing new laws to remove protections for wolves.
The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission approved a quota of 334 wolves to be killed by hunting or trapping in the 2024-2025 season, an increase from the previous year’s quota of 313 wolves.
In Switzerland in September 2020, more than half of Swiss voters (51.9%) rejected changes to hunting laws that allowed hunting of wolves. Gabor von Bethlenfalvy, large carnivore specialist at WWF Switzerland said in a press release, “The result shows that the Swiss population wants to strengthen and not weaken species protection.”
Despite the vote and having earmarked 7.7 million Swiss francs ($9 million) in 2024 for protecting flocks, conservative politicians in the federal government fast-tracked revisions that allowed for proactively hunting wolves—including shooting entire packs—even if they posed no threat.
Yellowstone National Park
Under the fast-tracked revisions, from December 1, 2023, to January 31, 2024, the cantons with a wolf population were allowed to kill a total of 12 packs and partially cull six more. The other 12 packs were to be left untouched. No one seems to know how these numbers were derived—wildlife biologists maintain that 20 packs must be left untouched to ensure the wolf’s survival in Switzerland.
The courts halted the hunt on January 3 due to objections from conservation organizations, but between December 2023 and January 2024, over 50 of Switzerland’s 300 wolves were killed.
WWF research has shown that the culling and hunting of wolves is usually ineffective and can be counterproductive in reducing attacks on livestock, unless it is carried out on a large scale—which could compromise the viability of wolf populations. In Yellowstone, killing females has even led to increased reproduction by other females in the pack.
Research also suggests that disrupting healthy packs by shooting wolves might lead to higher levels of livestock predation because lone wolves lack the support of a pack to hunt wild prey and are more likely to attack smaller animals.
Yellowstone National Park
Habitats of Coexistence in Portugal
Portugal offers another way forward. Nine thousand people live in 92 villages in the protected Montesinho Natural Park in northern Portugal. One hundred twenty species of breeding birds and 70% of Portugal’s terrestrial animal species also live there, including a large population of Portugal’s Iberian wolves.
Iberian wolf, Portugal
The Iberian wolf is a subspecies of the gray wolf inhabiting northwestern Spain and northern Portugal, mostly north of the Duoro River. There are approximately 300 wolves in Portugal’s northern and central highlands, and 3,000 in neighboring Spain. Iberian wolves have been isolated from mixing with other wolf populations for over a century. They form one of the largest wolf populations in Western Europe.
Because wolves have lived in the region for thousands of years unabated, the local community has maintained a connection to traditional methods of preventing attacks, such as guard dogs, fences and shepherding.
While conflict with wolves is still a challenge in Central Portugal, attitudes towards wolves remain largely positive, too. For local farmers, wolves keep other animals like deer and boar, which damage chestnut and grain crops, in check.
Iberian wolf, Portugal
What’s Needed? Education, Fences, Dogs & Wolf PR
How can more communities become more like Portugal? The three main threats to wolves are human-made. We have:
Livestock protection measures are relatively straightforward and extremely effective. Resistance to using minimal protective measures is a far greater issue than wolves.
Wolf management should focus on:
Ensuring diversity and density of wild prey populations
Where wild prey is scarce, wolves are more likely to target livestock. Restoring habitats to increase the availability of natural prey is an effective measure to prevent attacks.
Electric fencing
Fencing may be all that’s needed to protect livestock from wolves. In some studies, fixed enclosures have proven 100% effective.
Livestock guardian dogs
Presence of livestock guardian dogs can reduce attacks on livestock by up to 61%, and a combination of electric fences plus guard dogs is the most effective deterrent.
Shepherds
For over 20 years, WWF has supported the Pastoraloup program set up by FERUS, a French association for the protection of large predators, to train shepherds in the Haute-Provence Alps. In 2024, the program received over 150 applications for 60 internships. Even without dogs, the presence of a human shepherd can be a sufficient deterrent for wolves.
More than anything, though, wolves need good PR.
Iberian wolf, Portugal
Will We Choose Coexistence?
Whether they’re reintroduced, cross borders themselves or are in areas where they never disappeared, living in close proximity with growing populations of wolves can be controversial—primarily because people are afraid of them and we have abandoned traditional livestock guarding methods.
Public opinion and practices in Portugal show a way forward that honors wolves and local communities.
Sara Wehrli, a wolf conservationist for Pro Natura, Switzerland’s oldest environmental organization, has said, “The wolf is indigenous to Switzerland, so it’s just natural that it should return and play a part in the ecological system.”
Yellowstone National Park
In Montana, Colby Brokvist echoed that sentiment, “In my mind, there’s not another creature on the planet that defines wilderness like wolves. I want wolves on the landscape because as simple as it may sound, they are symbols of a wilderness that I want to keep on this Earth forever.”
Research shows wolves pose almost no threat to humans and surprisingly little threat to livestock compared to the extent of the debate.
In Nat Hab film’s Big Bad Wolf, Aaron Bott boils it down to this:
As wolves return to parts of their vast historic range, we must ask ourselves new questions: Are we going to choose to make room for them? Because it is a choice. We can choose to annihilate them. We did once. We have to choose to keep them here.
For me, the choice is clear.
For more on wolves, wolf reintroduction and wolf conservation travel
If you’d like to know more about wolves, wolf reintroduction in the American West or wolf-focused conservation travel in Yellowstone National Park, here are more resources and opportunities:
Wolves were reintroduced to Colorado in December 2023. For more on that reintroduction, Check Out Nat Hab’s Daily Dose of Nature Webinar with wildlife biologist and Nat Hab Expedition Leader Aaron Bott: The Pack is Back: Reintroducing Wolves to Colorado.
Looking for a wolf-centered photo expedition? Nat Hab offers an immersive wolf-tracking expedition into Yellowstone’s remote Northern Range. This wolf-focused winter wildlife adventure spends four full days in Yellowstone’s famed Lamar Valley and Northern Range, the best spot anywhere for tracking wolf packs living freely in their natural environment.
